Bernie Masters is a geologist/zoologist who spent 8 years as a member of the Western Australian Parliament. Married to Carolina since 1976 and living in south west WA, Bernie is involved in many community groups. This blog offers insights into politics, the environment and other issues that annoy or interest him. For something completely different, visit www.fiatechnology.com.au for information about vegetated floating islands - the natural way to improve water quality.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Why the Liberal government lost so badly on March 11

Forget the ‘It’s Time’ argument that both the Liberal and Labor
parties are using to explain the crushing defeat for the Liberal
government on March 11. It’s simply not true.

As politicians and
political commentators have said for a long time, oppositions don’t win
government, governments lose government. Of course, opposition parties
have to show they have competent people and relevant policies to do a
good job of governing should they win, but I’m not aware of a competent,
effective, unified government that has lost an election at state or
federal level in Australia in recent decades.

The reason why Barnett and the Liberals lost the election is because, in their second term, they were an inept government: * Roe 8 should have been started 2 or 3 years earlier, not 6 months prior to the election * the partial sale of Western Power should have been fully explained to electors over a year or more * Barnett should have jettisoned Troy Buswell rather than wait for the troubled MP to implode * the public should have been invited to suggest names for Elizabeth Quay * Joe Francis should have paid his defamation penalty out of his own pocket * problems at the new children’s hospital should have been resolved prior to the election * there was a total failure by government to explain where the $40 billion of state debt was being spent and
* Barnett should have stood down about a year ago to give his
replacement time to develop a profile and learn the ropes (and to avoid
the spectacle of WA business leaders conducting their own polling and
realising that a change of Premier was needed).

The preference
deal with One Nation didn’t help, of course. Many Liberal supporters
were appalled at Pauline Hanson’s racist attitudes and her temporary
opposition to vaccinations. Of the 13% of voters who were intending to
vote One Nation 3 weeks prior to election day, the preference deal
caused almost two thirds of them to desert the party and, rather than
return to the Liberal fold, they voted for Labor in protest at both
parties involved in the preference deal. The unimaginative and
ill-informed Liberal Party lay party executive as exemplified by
president Normal Moore should have ‘arranged’ for individual Liberal
candidates to negotiate their own preference deals: the outcome was
likely to have been largely similar to the formal deal struck between
the two parties but it could have been sold as an outcome determined by
the grass-roots of the Party, not the executive.

Two other
factors are important in explaining Saturday’s disaster. The first is
the lack of lay members within the Liberal Party, the people who work at
polling booths handing out How To Vote cards and who attend dinners and
other fund-raisers to help their local candidate pay for election
campaigns. The low lay party membership base also meant that fewer
people were involved in policy development and fewer people provided
feedback to the Party and MPs on topical or important issues. In turn,
party powerbrokers had an easier task of gaining support for themselves
and their candidates because they had fewer people needing to be
influenced.

As an example, I shared an office in Parliament with
Family and Children’s Services Minister Rhonda Parker for 3 years in the
late 1990s. Current powerbroker Mathias Cormann was her chief of staff
and I have never witnessed a senior party member as rude, as arrogant
and as verbally obscene as Cormann. I remain perplexed how a minister as
sensitive as Parker could have allowed someone like him to be on her
payroll.

The second factor in explaining the March 11 drubbing is
that the Premier had a team of very ordinary, lacking in talent and
lacklustre MPs to choose from. In 2008 when Barnett was given the
poisoned chalice of Liberal Party leadership, no one in the party
anticipated an early election, let alone a Liberal win. Because of Alan
Carpenter’s early election call, the Liberal Party chose candidates in a
rush, with powerbrokers choosing lots of sycophants and party hacks of
mediocre abilities. When Barnett then won the election, he had very few
people of talent and energy to choose his ministers from. As Gareth
Parker said in The West Australian of March 13, “Barnett was too often
asked to do so much because those around him contributed so little.”

As further proof of the low or dubious quality of sitting MPs, look at
Albert Jacob, a member of his church’s executive which expels people
with mental health issues. And Peter Katsambanis who left an
inexplicably arrogant and insensitive message on Rob Johnston’s phone at
2.50am on the morning after the election.

Now, I never thought I
would say anything good about Troy Buswell but I’ve been advised that
he was the only person in cabinet to argue against further capital
expenditure, saying that state debt needed to be controlled. That he was
overruled by Barnett without his fellow ministers backing the then
treasurer says a lot about the Premier’s dominance over and control of
cabinet, something that understandably led to accusations of arrogance.

The one positive to come out of the loss of so many Liberal seats on
March 11 is that it will give the party an opportunity to find new,
quality candidates and preselect them well in advance of the 2021
election. If the party’s powerbrokers are kept in check and a larger lay
party membership involves itself more with policy development and
candidate selection, the party will be a stronger, more representative
political organisation able to show to the people of WA that it is once
again capable of governing well for all citizens.

In the
meantime, we have the Mark McGowan Labor government for the next four
years. Many of his team have serious talents and abilities. They should
be capable of governing well provided they stand up to what are likely
to be the excessive claims of the union movement. I was elected to
Parliament in 1996 at the same time as the new Premier and I consider
him to be an honest and capable person. Whether he has the strength to
stand up to the unions is unknown, but here’s hoping that McGowan’s
first four years as Premier are better than Barnett’s last four years in
the top job.